Button By Richard Matheson Character Analysis

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If you had a button and everytime you pushed it you got $50,000 but someone you didn’t know died, would you do it? What if instead of it being someone you didn’t know it was someone you knew, then would you still do it? Well in the short story Button, Button by Richard Matheson the 2 main characters experience that situation. Throughout this story, Matheson uses red herrings to convince us that something good will come out of the climax, but instead, a tragic event happens. Red herrings are used many times throughout this book to try to throw readers off track. At the beginning of the book, Matheson made it seem like this book would have a happy ending for the couple, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis. When Mr. and Mrs. Lewis got a “cube-shaped carton sealed with tape, their …show more content…

Lewis, Norma, was the one to open it. Inside the carton “was a push-button unit fastened to a small wooden box. A glass dome covered the button.”(Matheson, 103) The way Matheson described it made it seem like a very lucky thing to have but when the tables turn and Mr. Arthur Lewis is the one to die, I realize that Matheson was setting us up to think one thing, but something different would happen. Later on in the book, when Mr. Steward arrived at their home, he explained to the couple what the button meant and what it was. Mr. Steward told them “If you were to push the button, somewhere in the world someone you don’t know will die. In return for which you will receive a payment of $50,000.”(Matheson, 104) Arthur had no interest in this button from the beginning and carries his strong opinion with him throughout the entire book. Although Arthur had no interest in the button, Mr. Steward had Norma hooked from the beginning. When Arthur insists that Mr. Steward should leave, he gives him his button unit back without any hesitation. This made me think that Arthur knew something bad would come from this button and he didn’t want to have any

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